Jördis Petersen
1,2
, Daniel Pröfrock
1
, Jose A.C. Broekaert
2
, Andreas Prange
1
1
Helmholtz-Centre-Geesthacht, Institute of Coastal Research, Max-Planck-Str. 1, 21502
Geesthacht, Germany
2
University of Hamburg, Department of Chemistry, Inorganic and Applied Chemistry, Martin-Luther-King-Platz 6, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
The monitoring as well as the assessment of the current marine environmental status within the context of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires new approaches for the accurate and sensitive determination of contaminant levels as well as their potential effects.
Contaminants show a great distribution variability in the marine environment due to their diverse chemical characteristics, different input pathways or their continuous remobilization from sediments caused by anthropogenic activities. For that reason it is really difficult to achieve a good environmental status as defined by 11 Descriptors within the Marine Strategy
Framework directive (MSFD). Furthermore 33 “historical” pollutants are listed in the Water
Framework Directive and only 5 of them are inorganic substances, but there are a lot of new emerging contaminants, which could reach the marine environment for example Nano particles, rare earth elements, pharmaceuticals and personal care products.
In addition current monitoring approaches are often based on low frequency spot sampling, which provides only snapshot information about the current contamination status, in particular when working in dynamic environments such as the German North Sea.
A solution could be the use of time-integrated sampler’s approaches namely passive and active sampling. In comparison to conventional spot sampling passive sampling allows the detecting of very low concentrations. Because of possibility to sample for a long period passive sampling is more reprehensive than point strategies because of determination of time integrated average contaminant concentrations. In addition passive sampling provides information about bioavailability of target pollutants. Currently the most commonly used passive sampling devices for the time integrated analysis of metals and metal species are DGT (diffusive gradients in thin films), polymeric sheets and Chemcatcher.
This poster contribution provides some first results about optimization of cleaning and extraction methods for selected passive samplers, which are mandatory for the successful future application of the selected devices for the measurement of some metal and metal species. This results will be used for calibrate the samplers and deploy them for monitoring the marine environment. To overcome possible interference problems, which often influences the determination of many environmentally relevant trace elements, ICP-MS-MS has been optimised for the accurate and sensitive determination of the targeted elements.